Tom Dunkel's Journey from Corporate Chains to Real Estate Freedom: Unlocking the SAFE Investment Method

Ever feel like you're shackled to your desk by the allure of a steady paycheck? Tom Dunkel, CIO of Bellrose Storage Group, knows that tug of war all too well. In our latest episode, he shares his transformative leap from the corporate tightrope into the world of real estate investment, offering a roadmap for those yearning to break free from their own 'Golden Handcuffs.' We venture through Tom's compelling narrative, from the shock of a corporate dismissal to the thrill of entrepreneurial freedom, providing invaluable takeaways for listeners keen to carve out their path toward financial independence.

Grit isn't just for the movies; it's a fundamental trait of any robust investment strategy. Join us as we dissect the investment landscape, where Tom Dunkel introduces the SAFE method—a lifeline for high net worth investors navigating the complexities of due diligence. This engaging discussion contrasts the predictability of tangible assets, like self-storage facilities, against the capricious waves of the stock market. For those looking to anchor their portfolio amidst financial squalls, Dunkel's insights into resilience and diversification are as reassuring as a lighthouse beacon in a stormy night.

Lastly, we navigate the nuanced choreography of investment strategies and the hard-earned lessons from past financial downturns. Listen closely as Tom imparts wisdom on mutual funds versus stocks, the heft of compliance requirements, and why your inner circle should be your personal board of advisors. As we wrap up, Tom extends a warm invitation to explore Bellrose Storage Group's investment opportunities. Whether you're a veteran investor or just dipping your toes into the investment pool, this episode is packed with guiding principles for creating a buoyant portfolio and a thriving team.

belrosestoragegroup.com
Tom@belrosestoragegroup.com

Follow David McIlwaine's Socials

YouTube | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

Join my newsletter @ MAC Assets

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hey everybody, david Malkowin, with another episode of Bricker Golden Handcuffs Today, I'm super excited to have with me Tom Dunkel. Tom's a CIO, or Chief Investment Officer, for those of you not in the knowledge on what a CIO is. With the background in corporate finance and nearly 30 years of real estate experience most of that in multiple different places Tom brings extensive knowledge and expertise to the Bellrose Storage Group, growing the company from start-up to world-class organization. Tom has specialized in discounted asset opportunities nationwide since 2006. His financial savvy, open, communicative manner and integrity have helped alternative investors achieve their wealth-building goals. Tom is, as I said earlier, the CIO or Chief Investment Officer at Bellrose, a seasoned team of real estate investment professionals that specializes in acquiring underperforming self-storage facilities in the northeast, south and midwest across the US, while turning around their performance to achieve high teens tax-advantaged returns to its high net worth, investor partners and a condensed timeframe of approximately two to three years. Tom, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Hey, david, it's great to be with you and all the listeners today. I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Yeah, Tom and I know each other a little bit through a fellow mentoring and masterclass that we share. Just in fact, Tom and I have both been on top of the same mountaintop. You wonder why do I bring this up? Because, well, I think that it's important to know people that climb mountains. I don't know what you think, but I think it's cool, Definitely.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Yeah, it's all about being around the right people, the right network and just trying to learn and grow every day.

Speaker 1: 1:45

Absolutely, Tom. This podcast is called Break a Golden Handcuffs for a Reason. I find that a lot of people that are in their mid-career life are experiencing what you and I have both experienced, and you told me about some of the stories offline. Have you ever had Golden Handcuffs?

Speaker 2: 2:04

I have David. Yeah, I was in corporate America for not a super long time, but I was there for about 12 years and rose from a senior financial analyst position after business school up to a VP of finance at a publicly traded company. Yeah, I've been there, done that. Have the merit badge.

Speaker 1: 2:25

Right, that's right. Tell me what did it feel like to have Golden Handcuffs?

Speaker 2: 2:32

It was very exciting at the time because our company was in a big growth mode. The options that I received were priced down here and then a year or so later we had a really good year and they were priced way up here. Of course I'm doing the math and I'm like, wow, my wealth is really expanding here. But of course you have that vesting period and you're tied down by those kinds of things. So on the one hand it was very exciting, but on the other hand it was a little scary because you never know where the world is headed.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Yeah, so true. My father-in-law recently passed away and his son gave a really impressive eulogy and the theme was things change, and I keep thinking about that in all kinds of life, and what you brought up there was you were given options, but things change, that's right. Yeah, so very true. So tell me a little bit about how you realized you had the handcuffs and then what you did to use them to your benefit or break them at some point.

Speaker 2: 3:38

Sure Well, my breaking of the handcuffs happened quite abruptly when I got fired for my corporate job.

Speaker 2: 3:47

Yeah, which is one of those things, david.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Honestly, when I took the job I was telling I was reported to the CFO and I was telling him, hey, I don't think I'm really a great fit for this position that you're hiring for, but he kept bringing me back for more interviews, offering me more money, more stock options, so eventually I had to say yes.

Speaker 2: 4:12

So I said yes and then, sure enough, even though I tried my hardest, it just wasn't really in my skill set, it wasn't in my lane. It was more of an internal operational finance type of role which I come from a mergers and acquisitions and kind of a deal background, raising big money and buying companies, and so this wasn't that, even though I had some exposure to that world. It just wasn't a great fit. So, surprise, surprise, a year into my tenure there, I get the axe and thankfully, like I said earlier, our company had done really well during that time. In fact, we were the fastest growing stock on the NASDAQ that year. So my options that were down here in single digits now were in the mid double digits, and so it allowed me a little bit of freedom when I did get the axe.

Speaker 1: 5:06

And I got the axe and I've said many times on this show that I got the axe as a merger where we were viewed as redundant and everybody that was a senior VP or regional VP got fired the same day.

Speaker 1: 5:18

And then off. A third of my staff then got laid off myself. It was a great time, and my stock options were issued in the 30s and they vested in the 20s and they were executed in the singles. And I keep my check on my bulletin board yeah, it's worth two dollars and thirty five cents and I never cashed it.

Speaker 2: 5:41

Yeah yeah, nice little reminder, great reminder change things change, yes, so so tell me.

Speaker 1: 5:50

You're sitting there, you've been piped, you've got a little bit of a windfall. What does Tom do?

Speaker 2: 5:59

Yeah, well, even before I get to the, the windfall part, david, it was kind of humiliating when I got fired because you know, I got called into the office. You know, hey, we're having a meeting at two o'clock, okay, so I go in meanwhile, I go, I go into that office for the meeting. Little do I know, the IT team is not only going into my computer, but they're like actually taking contacts out of my Contact list, because I, because I was a VP at the company, I had access to the board and senior executives and such, and they took those contacts out of my List.

Speaker 1: 6:37

I was like wow, really and then that's hardcore, and then.

Speaker 2: 6:42

Escorted out, and then one of the assistant executive assistants had to like pack up my office and and UPS it to my house. So it was like it was pretty abrupt. So, yeah, so things changed there for sure. But, like I said, the good news was I was able to exercise at least my first tranche of options, so I had some, you know, a little little bit of a word chest to go out and start building my. My real estate Portfolio is gonna be, you know, real estate Titan.

Speaker 2: 7:10

Well, david, this was 2006 when this happened, so yeah so, even though I had had an amazing career in corporate, I really was surrounded by some amazing, super sharp people. You know Harvard MBAs, wharton MBA, chicago MBAs, you know some PhDs, I mean I was around some really, really sharp people that I've learned a lot from, had a great foundation. So I figured, hey, you know this, this will be fine, because I had wanted to go out and do something on my own at some Mm-hmm. Anyway, I just wasn't expecting it to happen like that. So when I get out there and I'm like, hey, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna start looking around at these entrepreneurial opportunities and I did get into real estate.

Speaker 2: 7:52

But what your listeners might also be interested in hearing, david, is I because I did have a young family at home. I had a two-year-old and a four-year-old at home I Said, hey, you know, I just to kind of hedge my bet, I should look at some corporate, some other corporate jobs. And, sure enough, I go out there, I get hooked up with a head hunter and he comes to me with this awesome opportunity. It was mergers and acquisitions in a global company that was backed by the Koch brothers, you know billionaires, and it was in this. It was in a cool industry and I you know they were coming at me with big money and this was pre IPO right, I would have had a whole new, bigger, honkier set of Golden handcuffs.

Speaker 2: 8:39

But I'm in the interview and the guy was super nice, and in the back of my head I just hear this little voice saying don't do it, don't do it, you need to go out on your own. And so, man, it was tough. But I got home from that interview I called the head hunter. I said hey, I'm really sorry, but I need you to pull my name from consideration. And he said you know, you're there, guy right.

Speaker 2: 9:04

And I'm like, yeah, I've got that vibe and I was like I don't know what to tell you, I gotta go out and try to do my own thing. So you know that was 17 years ago, so I'm still still standing. Then knocked down several times but I'm still standing here today and I wouldn't change it for the world, really.

Speaker 1: 9:21

But Can we dive into that for a second? Sure, the courage that takes To listen to that little voice Is tremendous, right? I mean, how many of these?

Speaker 2: 9:34

stupidity. I don't know somewhere in there.

Speaker 1: 9:36

How many of us have ignored that little voice? Many time? I've ignored it many times. So what, yeah, difference did it make in your life to listen to that little bitty voice in the back of your head?

Speaker 2: 9:50

Yeah, you know, I do think about that sometimes. I think you know it would have been. I'm sure it would have been challenging, but I think it would have been. I was gonna use the word easy would have been easy for me to have stayed in that corporate world, you know kind of. You know stayed in the quote-unquote safe environment. But you know I had, I had already been laid off a couple times before I got fired. So I was like, hey, you know what? There's no real, there's not really a such thing as corporate security anymore. Job no there's no.

Speaker 2: 10:21

And I just kind of had a desire to go and just see what I could do on my own. And so I, like I said, I had a great education, great background in the corporate world I figured, hey, I just, I just need an opportunity and I can go and I can crush it and all this stuff. Well, as we touched on a minute ago, it's it was 2006, and I proceeded to get my butt Whooped those next few years and my big cash pile of money pretty much went away. I got, you know, substantially wiped out. Thankfully I didn't have to like declare bankruptcy or go through any foreclosures thankfully because it was close there for a little while.

Speaker 2: 11:02

But I was able to claw my way out of that, started another business that took off. I started a couple other businesses those failed and then now here we are, later, I still have the one successful business that's generated over 53 million of revenue over the years. But now we've, in the last few years, we've gotten into self-storage, which is a great asset class, and we've got a great team and we're doing pretty neat things there right now.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Let's dive into this a little bit. You're one of the rare guys that says, yeah, I failed, I got fired. I failed. I damn near went bankrupt Twice and twice. So I often say that it's not if you're going to get fired or laid off, it's when.

Speaker 2: 11:47

And we better all.

Speaker 1: 11:49

If you're a 35-year-old sales engineer and you're kicking ass right now. Plan to get grift, that's right Plan for it. Both of us have little gray coming in and I got this spot in the back that kind of feels the wind go through it. So we've experienced this and we're not your dads telling you this either. So how do you find that inner strength to get up?

Speaker 2: 12:21

You know, I don't know, david. I think certain people are just born with a certain level of grit. I mean, we talk about grit in our company a lot because we are in a yeah, we're in a volatile world. We're in a volatile asset class. Even though self-storage is one of the most steady asset classes out there, it still has its ups and downs. So one of our core values is actually grit, and I don't know where it comes from, necessarily, david, but I guess I just, and generally I'm a pretty quiet, mild-mannered guy, but I do have a burning desire to win and just keep going. And I also want to see what can I achieve, because I've been able to achieve a lot and I just want to see, like, how far can I go with that, how far can I push that? And you're not going to see me running around with my hair on fire. It's just not my personality, but it's just something internal and I don't really know where it comes from, david. I think it's just people are wired differently and I can't really explain it.

Speaker 1: 13:28

So this might be a strange interview question, but bear with me for a second. If you're an investor working with your company and you know that the CIO has grit. What value is that for the investor?

Speaker 2: 13:41

Yeah Well, I think it's valuable for an investor because me and our team, we all live by these core values. It's not just me, I mean, obviously, being one of the founders and owners of the company. You know, my personality and the culture that we've created here comes largely from within me and my partners. But if a deal goes sideways and we shouldn't even say if right, david, I mean when a deal goes sideways right, when you get rift, when bad things happen, because there's 100% chance, right, that something's not going to go right- Somewhere, somewhere you're right.

Speaker 1: 14:14

I love it. There's 100% chance something's not going to go right.

Speaker 2: 14:18

That's right. So you know life is 90% how you respond to those things, 10% what happens. So in our company and with me personally, you know I like to win, I love to win. And so you know we grind and we are creative and we problem solve. You know, when a, when a problem comes up at one of our facilities, we put our heads together, we get creative, we think about what can we do to get this pointed in the right direction, and it's a team effort. But there's a lot of creativity thrown around, there's a lot of ideas thrown around, and there's not a lot of egos. It's like, hey, somebody might zig when they should as ag, and it's like, okay, well, that's behind us, let's work together as a team to grind through this and make sure that we do the best job we can possibly for our investors.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Love that you know. Talking about investors, all of us work with high net worth investors and most of us have some sort of personal experience, both earning and losing money in investments. And what do you think are some of the pitfalls that high net worth investors need to be focused on in today's environment?

Speaker 2: 15:34

Sure, well, I think it's not only today's environment, but in pretty much all environments, david, I think too many high net worth investors, because, let's face it, they're busy doing their thing that made them wealthy, right? So, whether it's being a sales exec or an engineer or some other kind of executive, that's where most of their time is spent.

Speaker 2: 15:51

So, unfortunately, what I see a lot of are hey, I got a stock tip from my brother-in-law, or hey I met this guy at a real estate networking event and, wow, he was so nice and we really hit it off and we're both Eagles fans and I'm going to invest $100,000 with him. So we actually have an ebook. David, thank you. I don't know if you were setting me up for this plug, but we have an ebook that we call the SAFE method. It's a safe investing checklist and SAFE is an acronym. Of course, investing isn't safe, but hopefully using this due diligence framework will help you make better decisions. So SAFE, real quick. S is for sponsor. Who's running the deal? What's their background? Have they done this before? A is the asset.

Speaker 1: 16:37

Do they have grit? I got to jump in A sponsor. Do they have grit?

Speaker 2: 16:41

Are they going to fold up, have they?

Speaker 1: 16:43

been there, rinsed and repeated yeah, great questions. Do they have some battle?

Speaker 2: 16:46

scars, yeah, all those things, wounds that have healed. That's right, that's right. And then A is for asset. What is it exactly that you're investing in? If you can't explain it to your mom or a small child, you probably don't know enough about the deal to put your money into it. F is for financials, which is what are the projections? Are they reasonable? Are they achievable? And not only that how does this investment fit into your personal investing goals and are you putting too many eggs in one basket and that kind of thing? And then E, finally, is for exit. How do you get out of this thing? It's not like you can go to Schwabcom and click, click, click, sell your position in a Bellrose storage group deal. It just doesn't work that way. So you need to be comfortable that your money's going to be tied up for two, three, four years, whatever we plan out in the beginning. But ultimately, all those questions, david, are to help the investor sleep well at night because they understand where their hard-earned money went.

Speaker 1: 17:45

Yeah, that sleeping well at night is invaluable. So I kind of want to dig in a little bit. And you talk about the asset and I'm a multifamily guy primarily, but I do. I have a residential brokerage, I've done all kinds of different deals and I see a value in self-storage. So if you're the guy that's, you know that sales engineer I talked about why would you care about self-storage over, say, triple net leases?

Speaker 2: 18:18

Sure, I mean, look, if you're a high net worth guy, a sales engineer, why not do both? Why not do triple net leases and self-storage and multifamily? I mean that's diversification, right, david? You know Wall Street guys, drive me nuts if you don't mind me getting on my soapbox here.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Climb on up to the top and make sure you leave enough room for me to stand next to you.

Speaker 2: 18:40

I mean, their idea of diversification is large cap, mid cap and small cap. Well, guess what? When that tsunami hit Japan, you know, back in the 90s, all those stocks went down. But you know what? The value of the multifamily property around the corner didn't go down. The value of the self-storage facility around the corner didn't go down.

Speaker 1: 18:58

Yeah, Let me push back on that for a second, Because I think this is really the meat right. Let's, let's. So. I have money in the stock market. I have money passively, I have money actively. I am a sponsor as well. Yeah, Check, check, check. We're equals in this, and I? I think about the word Tina. There is no alternative, was what?

Speaker 1: 19:20

my broker one time told me and I got so mad at this guy I wanted to punch him in the teeth he then told me I wasn't rich enough to invest in anything but equities. Right, and I was making high six figures a year. Yeah, it wasn't like I was just, you know, making a buck, yeah. And so diversification if you're buying large cap, mid cap, small cap, you're buying publicly traded equities. That's right. All of it is publicly traded. And if you're buying multifamily, you're buying storage. And you're buying triple net, you're buying real estate. That's right. What's the diff? So my brain says I agree with you and I want to know what's the difference? How is one diversified and one's not?

Speaker 2: 20:05

Sure, Well, I would say it has to do. Sorry if we're getting technical here, but it has to do with market efficiency, right.

Speaker 2: 20:11

The stock market, I mean, there's gazillions of trades every day, right. So you know those margins of value are so tight. You know you're just. If you're in a little investor, you're just. You know you're just riding along the waves in there that the big money is doing, whereas in, whether it's triple net or multifamily or self-storage, you know these are fragmented markets. They're highly inefficient, right, and so meaning there's not that many trades that go on and it's hard to compare one to another so and so for, like self-storage, for example, you know we could be in a facility outside of Atlanta, georgia, and that market might be doing great, and our facility over in, you know, wilmington, north Carolina, you know that's a completely different market and maybe that one gets hit by a hurricane or maybe this one gets hit by something you know. So to me that's the real diversification is being in different asset classes cured by real estate, different geographies and even different operators, david, different operators, right.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Because that's one of the risks out there is. You don't want to put your entire you know investment portfolio with one sponsor with I don't care how you know sexy their website is or how much experience they have. I think you want to spread it around.

Speaker 1: 21:33

Yeah, I did an experiment where I gave my children they were in high school a thousand dollars each and I said, okay, pick some investments. And we had this whole weekend Conversation around it and my son bought his eight shares of Apple right before it split Cool, my daughter avoided it and didn't do anything. Finally, I said to her, let's pick an index. So she picked a Nasdaq 100 index and, and you know, over the last couple years they're both in college now and it's it's. They've both had pretty good returns. Mm-hmm, the volatility, is it? One wins one month and one wins the next month. Right, and what this taught me? And this goes back to diversification. Somebody picked a home run in Apple, but Apple's not a secret, you know, it's one of the largest companies in the world. It's, it's nearing in on it, the, the T cap, you know maybe it's worth a trillion.

Speaker 1: 22:29

It's, it's unbelievable, right, yeah, crazy. And then the Nasdaq 100 is an amalgamation of the top 100 publicly traded tech companies right, basically, yeah, and the diversification is. That's a great example of it. Sometimes you can win being super focused, but oftentimes, sure you equally perform being far more diversify with less risk, and I think that one of the things about self-storage and commercial real estate in general is that the risk profile is lessened but the rewards can be set, exceeded, so long as you follow that due diligence. I love the safe acronym. I have an acronym called scale, which is shelter, cash flow, appreciation, leverage and equity. I might change the equity to exit, feel free, but then I got to redo my book. But I love what you're saying here about safe. Yeah, tell me more about that.

Speaker 2: 23:25

Well, as long as we're, you know, throwing out you know big fancy terms. I think what you're describing, david, is what we call asymmetric returns right, Absolutely so that you know, the upside is way bigger than the potential downside.

Speaker 2: 23:39

So it's like buying a, you know, call option or something. You can only lose your premium. But yeah, so the safe method is really just something that I've just developed over the years. You know, 17 years of being out there banging around myself looking at all kinds of different investments and, frankly, you know, trying to highlight, learn from the mistakes that I made, like putting $50,000 with a sponsor because I thought he was a good guy. Meanwhile it turned it out turned out that he was a scheister and stole my money, along with many, many millions of dollars of other people's money, and so now he's in prison and I got back a check for six dollars and forty seven cents. What?

Speaker 1: 24:19

an expensive and cheap, to wish it at the same time right.

Speaker 2: 24:23

That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1: 24:24

But can we dig into that? Sure, we dig into that because everybody's scared they're gonna lose their money. Yeah, right should be. Amen, say it again.

Speaker 2: 24:34

You should be scared to use your money.

Speaker 1: 24:35

You should be, and just because you're a good guy, hey, I'm a good guy, you're a good guy. Mm-hmm but that doesn't mean that we're the best fiduciary for you. That's right, and and I think I wondered myself, have I ever lost money in the stock market?

Speaker 2: 24:51

I Don't know if you ever think this, you're also.

Speaker 1: 24:54

I've lost I lot. I remember I sold. My wife came to me at the time at the bear market in the bear market started in 2008 and she said to me I can't take it anymore. And I executed us hundred K loss. The next day started the bull market rally that went for 2008. Yeah yeah, so what was the difference between losing in the stock market and losing it in a real estate investment?

Speaker 2: 25:22

Right, it's well, I think it's. I think it's something that the safe, you know checklists can help with that. And you know you mentioned Apple a little bit ago. David, how do you, how do you even do, do diligence on Apple? It's huge company. It's impossible, you, it's impossible. Are you gonna? Are you gonna be able to call, pick up the phone and call Tim Cook and ask him questions about Apple?

Speaker 2: 25:44

You can call, he ain't gonna hear it, but right here at Bell Royce storage group you know I do investor calls all the time. You want to know what's happening in our business? Great. You want to see our financial? You want to meet up? You want to come in the office? Come on over. We'll share with you or all of our KPI Reports for all of our facilities so you can see that we're actually running a real operation here. You can meet the team and so you know.

Speaker 2: 26:06

For, for people invest in public equity that's what I was saying earlier about how right the public equity markets are are dominated by these huge Investors, right, the black stones of the world, and so they're the ones who are. They're getting the insider information, frankly, for being honest, and they're getting you know they're making those market moves if you're in there. I Personally feel that and this is what I do is I just invest in mutual funds? Because I don't. You know, I don't have the time to in or the inclination to analyze individual stocks, especially after being in a publicly traded company and Seeing how the sausage is made when they do come up with their quarterly and annual reports, because that was part of my role, yeah my two, I would do the financial analysis, I take it to the CFO and by the time he and the CEO got finished massaging and twisting things around, it came back.

Speaker 2: 26:58

I'm like what is this? This isn't even anything, yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:01

I used to have to sign off on socks compliance and Sarbanes oxy compliance. Oh ouch, and so Sarbanes. Oxy compliance requires that you give Honest and forthright knowledge. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:12

I'm not saying anybody ever breaks the law. But yeah, socks, compliance Requires you to be proactively optimistic and I think you said is really good that, as a small investor and let's face it, if you got less than a fifty million dollars, ten million dollars in the market, you're a small guy. No one cares about your equities now, never, nope, because you don't matter. And in a company like Mac assets or Bell Rose, it matters. That's right, and we do follow the vagaries of the institutions and the vagaries of the day traders. Anyway, we've got. We can beat up on Wall Street all day long. I try to keep these two around half an hour, so let me ask a couple questions I'd like to ask all my guests as we finish up, of course, knowing what you know now, what's one piece of advice you wish you had 10 years ago?

Speaker 2: 28:04

Yeah, great question. For me, David. We touched on this earlier. It keeps coming back to having the right people around you, Because if you're the smartest person in your orbit, you got to change things up, because you want to be around people that have been there, done that or they have specific knowledge that they can share with you or teach you. That's really the way to grow yourself personally and to grow your company and become a better investor.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Love that. The converse of that is what's? A piece of advice that you followed that you wish you had ignored.

Speaker 2: 28:44

Oh man, yeah, when the residential market was crashing 2008, 2009, I had some people telling me hey, you got to go all in. This is the time that we've been waiting for. Prices are down. So I did that. It almost killed me. I should have been a little more cautious. I was a little too gung-ho back there trying to catch the falling knife. I got cut.

Speaker 1: 29:13

As the knife falls. I think there's a lesson here for all of our listeners as the knife falls, make sure that it's quit falling before you grab it, or make sure that it's close to the bottom, because you can't ever time it properly. That's correct. But what I hear from you is that you grabbed the knife too far up the fall.

Speaker 2: 29:32

Yeah, not only that, I doubled down on my bet. That's probably a time to be cautious, certainly when times are rough, like in the times that we're entering right now, david, that's when investors can really set themselves up for some nice gains in the future. But you just want to do it judiciously and cautiously. I was a little too cavalier, and so what's a great way to take advantage.

Speaker 1: 29:59

I think that we all agree we're on the precipice of some distress. We're on the precipice of the Fed finally finding stasis. I was talking to an acquisitions head yesterday and he said the buy sell spread is compressing. Now it's becoming more realistic, so everybody's starting to froth at the mouth, right, and what advice do you give at this time?

Speaker 2: 30:26

So I was at a conference recently. Unfortunately, david, you weren't able to be there, but one of the people on stage commented that it's not about timing the market, it's about time in the market.

Speaker 2: 30:40

And I thought that was super clever because, whether I think, if you're a seasoned investor and you're committed to building an alternative asset portfolio of investments, it's kind of like dollar cost averaging. Right, you keep investing, you be cautious and you want to do your due diligence, follow the safe method to make sure you're asking all the right questions, but you don't want to shy away too much because, like Warren Buffett says, when people are greedy you should be fearful, and right now people are fearful, so now is the time to be calculatedly. Is that a word? Yes?

Speaker 1: 31:19

Greedy Calculate You're going to be like George W Bush and say you're going to start creating a strategy right.

Speaker 2: 31:27

That's right yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:29

So I love that. Now is the time to be calculatedly greedy Correct. So is there a thought or quote, or something that you live by that you'd like to share with our listeners today?

Speaker 2: 31:43

Yeah, well, yeah, I touched on it earlier in our talk today, David just about our core values. I think one of the things that really has helped Bellrose develop and grow a great team is our core values. So we have I'll just rattle them off real quick. There's five of them, principled, pretty self-explanatory. Champion is a verb, a form of champion, so we champion each other, we lift each other up.

Speaker 2: 32:12

Seal team. You can see over my shoulder here my son's in the Navy. He's not a Navy SEAL, but we have other military connections. So SEAL team just means that we execute with excellence and we work together as a team and we pay attention to the details. Gumby harkens back to the cartoon character of the 60s and 70s from my childhood, where he's very flexible and always cheerful and always looking to help out as best he can in his community. And then we touched on. Grit is our fifth one and we actually, because I'm here in Philadelphia, we call it gritty. Those of you who don't know, gritty is the name of the flyer Philadelphia Flyers hockey team mascot and he's really ugly but he gets things done.

Speaker 1: 33:04

That's your comment about the Eagles earlier.

Speaker 2: 33:06

Yeah, exactly yeah.

Speaker 1: 33:08

Well, hey, Tom, it's been wonderful talking with you. Tell us how do people track you down and learn more about the Gumby gritty SEAL culture that is Bell Rose?

Speaker 2: 33:17

Sure Well, I'm very easy to find. If you go anywhere on Facebook or LinkedIn and you search for Tom Dunkel, you'll find many of my podcast interviews like this one. We do a lot of sharing and value add to our investor community through our social media posts. You can also find your way to bellrosestoragegroupcom, where you can learn more about our team and our portfolio and ways to join us in our investing journey and self-storage.

Speaker 1: 33:44

Awesome. Thank you for joining us, tom, and you've been listening to another episode of Brick your Golden Handcuffs.